


a time for sleep as well

by themastersbeard



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-25
Updated: 2016-04-25
Packaged: 2018-06-04 08:40:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6650704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themastersbeard/pseuds/themastersbeard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'The evenings on the base are different. The pilots throw parties, which General Organa doesn’t mind at long as they keep their senses about them, and coo when Poe brings him along. They ply him with multi-coloured drinks, and Poe leans over— too close, Finn can feel his breath against his ear, and why have his legs gone all wobbly?— and whispers, “Don’t drink that if you don’t want to, it’s alcohol, it’ll make you feel funny.”'</p><p>Or a one-shot on those inbetween times.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a time for sleep as well

The Resistance base is hopelessly disordered. There’s a coat of grime beneath the consoles, and the mess halls loud, and more than a little filthy. He likes it, he does, the way people laugh overly loud, and the way the Resistance members shout across the room to friends, waving them over with movements that are never self-conscious.

The pilots ply him with food that comes in colours and tastes that he can scarcely conceive of, making it their mission to to make him “worldly”. He doesn’t mind, mostly, when they mix together revolting concoctions that he doesn’t realise are revolting until he’s fallen for the trap. He laughs with them, even when Poe cuffs them over their heads and tells them to _knock it off_ while fighting to keep the edges of his own mouth downturned.

He’s envious of the way the others are unperturbed by the clang of metal in a way that Finn isn’t, the sound being just a touch shy of the rattle of Phasma’s footfalls. But most, he likes hearing stories of their childhoods, of their adolescence filled with misadventures and mishaps and misdemeanors so harebrained as to be inconceivable to him. He’s envious of that too.

Mostly he likes Poe, who speaks too loud, and who throws his head back when he laughs. It doesn’t take a lot to make Poe laugh.

He loves it all, truly does, until the moments that he doesn’t.

The nights on base are too quiet, so quiet that every distant sound leaves him feeling keyed-up , and the sound of his own breathing seems to echo through the room. It’s hard to sleep, harder still to keep the nagging thoughts at bay. He takes to pacing the corridors, and memorising the shadowy halls and sharp turns. _Planning escape routes? Shut up. Shut up._

They’ve moved base to Id’anos when he runs into Poe. It’s half-three and stumbles out something about exercise, and his scar smarting, and needing to stretch. He’s a terrible liar at the best of times.

“Now yours is a face that I was not expecting to see,” Poe claps a hand on his shoulder, a perpetual familiar gesture, comforting in a way that makes something in his chest curl.

He doesn’t ask any questions, but leads them outside to the hangars and further still to the lake which glimmers strangely in the light of the two moons, red, and silver.

“Sometimes it’s just hard to drown out the noise, ya know, pal?” Poe picks up a stone and hurls it into the water in one long fluid motion.

“Yeah, I know,” he picks a stone up for himself, smooth on one side, with a single jagged edge. It’s cool and heavy against his palm before he tosses it into the air, pausing to watch the way it shatters the smooth surface of the water. Sometimes even the most mundane of things feels like an act of defiance.

Maybe it’s that Finn is not good at detecting deception, is so used to bald-faced certainties that that he cannot yet recognise the poorly-concealed maneuverings to coax him into speaking, but he eventually finds himself telling Poe that sometimes the quiet is just too damn hard, too damn unfamiliar in a way that sets him on edge.

And Poe nods, as if it’s the most logical thing in the world, his face serious, as if he can, and does understand. Then he claps a hand to Finn’s shoulder, face splitting into an encouraging grin.

“Why didn’t you just tell me earlier, buddy? We thought you’d want some privacy. You can bunk with me, eh? Problem solved?” and he says it as if it’s the easiest thing in the world, so why does it make Finn feel so absurdly guilty?

They drag an extra bed into Poe’s room the next day, Finn has so few things that they’re transported in one go, and that’s the end of that.

“I’m warning you, pal, I’m a snorer— just give me a shove if I start up,”

But Finn doesn’t, even when it happens. It’s familiar, reminds him of Nines and Zeroes and Slip. He doesn’t miss them, not in a real tangible way, but is conscious of the spaces they’ve left behind. Poe’s presence helps to smooth the rough lines.

Thereonin it’s easier to sleep, and easier, generally, just to be. He still hankers after Rey, the loss still aching, and at other moments he can’t help but feel a little pathetic. The gnawing worry grows more bold the more time he spends with nothing to do, and pfassk, he has never had so much time with nothing to do. The instructional vids hadn’t told him how much of war was occupied by simply waiting. In those in-between times it’s easier for his mind to wander, and sometimes, just sometimes, he wonders if the pilots actually liked having him about, they have everything to offer, and everything to show, and he nothing. With Rey, somehow things had felt more even-footed. She, at least, had thought Luke Skywalker just a _myth_.

Other-times he wonders what the First Order was doing in this interim. How many of his squad were left? And to whom have they been reassigned? He sometimes wonders if there are others like him, others who didn’t have the luck to meet some hot-shot pilot with the kindest eyes. These are the thoughts on which he likes to dwell least.

The evenings on the base are different. The pilots throw parties, which General Organa doesn’t mind at long as they keep their senses about them, and coo when Poe brings him along. They ply him with multi-coloured drinks, and Poe leans over— too close, Finn can feel his breath against his ear, and why have his legs gone all wobbly?— and whispers, “Don’t drink that if you don’t want to, it’s alcohol, it’ll make you feel funny."

“What d’you mean, ‘funny’?"

And then Finn finds out: loose, and happy, and rather daring. Pava tells him the next day that he danced up a storm, but the evening is a bit of a blur, and the morning after is decidedly not nice. He makes sure not to drink so much after that.

He feels guiltier for it, despite his burgeoning social life. At parties, Poe leaves when Finn leaves. The first few times he thinks it a coincidence, and then after that he tries to wait it out, wait for Poe to indicate that he’s turning in before he does himself. It never happens, he dances, and drinks, and always seems to be the center of attention— and Finn isn’t surprised, he _is_ the handsomest person on the base— but he doesn’t want to feel that he’s pulling him away from his friends. Just once he wants to tell him that he’s not a kid, that he doesn’t need minding, that he can walk the halls back to the room just o.k., but he doesn’t want this fleeting illusion of belonging to dissipate. With Rey gone, where would that leave him? Alone. He’s never before been alone.

The next party is near Snap’s quarters, and after a few hours of nursing a Corellian brandy he begins to feel everything a bit too keenly. He suddenly grows hyper-conscious of how loud and bright and _moving_ everything is. It’s not the First Order, that he can say with certainty, and suddenly he can’t contain the sense of unbridled panic which bubbles up. He wants Poe, but then doesn’t, and waits until he’s out of view to duck out. Outside, he skirts the corridors until he finds one abandoned, and then rests a steadying hand against the wall.

He goes back to the shared quarters once he catches his breath, pausing in the doorway at the difference between the shared halves of the room; Poe’s a scene of unmitigated disorder— bed strewn with shirts and inside-out trousers, balled socks by his boots— and then Finn’s: unnoteworthy.

He thinks about lying in Poe’s bed, and stars, why does he even think that? He pointedly makes his way to his own bed, feeling sweaty and weak. His hands feel jittery as he peels off his shoes, so he lays on his back, settling them atop the cool overs and trains his eyes on the ceiling, occupying himself with counting the rivets. _Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen._ He’s intending to get up, get changed, and has no intention of sleeping, but somewhere between forty-six and forty-seven he drifts off, and drifts through half-sleep until he’s awoken by a hand shaking him.

Poe’s face comes into focus slowly, and when Finn properly comes to, his stomach gives a jolt.

“Buddy, you gotta come with me,” he says, before Finn can open his mouth in question. And then he backs away, giving Finn space to maneuver out of bed and to fumble with his shoes.

Any sense of unease at the peculiarity of events dissipates when he properly looks to Poe, who seems content, a smile dancing at his lips, and his hand tapping out a song against his thigh. He leads them out to the hangars and further still to the lake which glimmers strangely in the light of the two moons, red, and silver. There, he touches his knuckles to the back of Finn’s hand.

“Look,” he whispers.

And Finn does, for long moments which stretch out, out to the still water, and further still to the swaying trees. He turns back to look at Poe whose hair is ruffling in the breeze, and whose brown eyes are raised upwards in anticipation. He can see the moment the scene shifts, notes the smile that rises to the corners of the other man’s mouth, and then diverts his gaze away.

Hundreds of birds have taken to the sky, flying in formation, dipping first towards the surface of the lake, and then sweeping away in long arcs. The reflected moonlight dapples their plumage strangely, silver, and scarlet, and gold, so that they almost look aflame.

Poe’s hand clenches on his arm, squeezing in some unasked question. Finn watches with his heart in his throat as the birds sway apart, then together once more, somehow each knowing its place in the larger array.

“They’re beautiful,” he whispers, by way of response. And then thinks that this, the moonlight and birds and Poe, is the closest he has to a perfect memory.

“They’re Whisper birds,” Poe says, voice inflected with fondness. “They have them back on Yavin 4 too— where I grew up— my mother, she used to wake me to watch them. They usually fly at day, but this—” he waves a hand, “— is more, more—”

“Special?” Finn supplies.

Poe only smiles in response, a toothy thing that crinkles the skin by his eyes. He’s beautiful, Finn thinks suddenly, wildly, and wants something more, his fingers curling at his sides, not knowing what he wants or how to ask.

“You okay, buddy?" 

He could answer yes, though it’s a half-lie. There are many things he could say, he could tell him how afraid he is of what the future holds, not for himself, but for Rey, for the General, for Poe himself, for all these tiny fragile lives which cling to this shell of a world.

“Can I kiss you?” is what he says instead.

Poe’s breath comes out in a laugh, and before Finn has time to worry about what that means, there are hands at either side of his face, and lips pressed gently against his own. They are softer than he imagined, and when Poe pulls away he’s still smiling.

There are many things which Finn ought to say, and he will, but for now he feels okay with just letting them be.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Robert Fagles' translation of Book XI of the Odyssesy:
> 
> 'So the man of countless exploits carried on:  
> "Alcinous, majesty, shining among your island people,  
> there is a time for for many words, a time for sleep as well.  
> But if you insist on hearing more, I'd never stint  
> on telling my own tale and those more painful still,  
> the griefs of my comrades, dead in war's wake,  
> who escaped the battle cries of Trojan-armies  
> only to die in blood at journey's end —  
> thanks to a vicious woman's will..."'


End file.
